Who Turned Out The Lights?

Are you ready to party like it's 1899?  At 8:00PM tomorrow evening, everyone is encouraged to turn off all electric lights for one hour in a useless gesture of "caring" during Earth Hour.  I thought we were finally over all of this bogus global warming crap, especially since it was proven back in 2009 that the so-called scientists monitoring climate change had actually manipulated their data. If you don't remember, or never heard about, "climategate," you can refresh your memory here:  http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/11/in-climate-hack.html  It's bogus, people.  It's all made up. This kind of foolishness makes me want to break things, it really does.  Don't you environmental kooks realize what electricity did for civilization?  We are not that far removed from a time when "burning the midnight oil" meant just that!  It wasn't even a hundred years ago that your grandfather actually did walk five miles to school in the snow, because there was no such thing as a school bus.  In 1911, if you fell asleep reading a book and knocked over your candle, you might set fire to the whole neighborhood, and there were no fire engines, because there were no engines, just horses!  Mom couldn't e-mail dad to buy some milk on the way home from work, even if she had time,which she didn't because there were no convenient electric appliances to help her with her work!  Laser surgery?  Nope.  Refrigeration?  Huh-uh.  Hot water heater?  Try the wood-burning stove.  Energy from coal and gas changed everything. Edison's light bulb rolled back the night and made it possible for you to do so much more!  Edison was even quoted as saying, "We'll make electricity so cheap, only the rich will burn candles," and he was right!  Cheap and reliable energy has changed the world.  Look, It's not like I want to cut down all of the rain forests, pave all of the lakes, and build mini malls in our national parks.  I agree, we should not pollute our water or air.  Common sense will tell you that, you don't need Al Gore to tell you clean air and water are important. But people, turning your lights off for an hour tomorrow is just plain stupid.  It only proves that you can be made to feel guilty by people who out consume you everyday by a hundred times.  You are not saving the planet, not even symbolically, because the planet is in no danger. Even if carbon dioxide was a pollutant (it isn't), even if the earth is getting measurably warmer (its' not), and even if oil weren't a natural product (it is), the earth was here before us, and will be here after us.  I actually posted on this idiocy back in 2008, and you can find that post in the archive here:  http://blogoftheunion.blogspot.com/2008/03/google-goes-black-to-go-green.html  Read that if you want to know what a real waste of time this is.  The bottom line for me, though is, why the hell would we ever want to go back to the way things were in 1899?

Google Goes Black To Go Green

In a perfect example of pointless gestures in "raising awareness," Google has changed the background of their search page from black to white to combat the effects of man-made global warming. The idea is not for Google to shut down and stop using energy for a day-not even for an hour, as they ask their customers to do this evening. Google freely admits, " it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display." Besides, turning off your entire business for a day to combat something that no one can prove is happening would be stupid. They just want you to know that they care. They also want you to turn out your lights for an hour. Here's the plan, according to http://www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour/

"On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation." Will it help save the earth from global warming? No....but won't it feel good to acknowledge your commitment? To show your friends and co-workers that you care? Well...it probably won't even accomplish that much. In fact, after about five minutes in the dark tonight, you'll probably begin to feel pretty stupid. And bored. You'll get tired of trying to feel like you've "done something" to combat global warming, switch your computer back on, and go back to chatting on My Space with other people who "care" about global warming. Google, having done nothing real at all to save the planet (by their own admission), can still pat themselves on their backs for making you feel guilty enough about the "threat of global warming" to turn out your lights. Meanwhile, the only proof that global warming exists is- the nightly news says it exists. No where have I read anything that shows conclusive evidence. Since I don't believe in participating in useless exercises in self-gratification (with the exception of my blog, of course), I'll be leaving my lights on. If you choose to turn yours off, well...then you really are in the dark. Just don't expect it to change anything.